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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : MOD trackers
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thwill Guru  Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
I've spun this off from the PETSCII Robots thread to avoid cluttering that thread with my own rubbish: Thanks Martin, unfortunately I have no experience with this at all. I'm trying to give @Volhout's "Circle" game an extra coat of polish before including it on the next version of the Game*Mite distribution. It uses a mod file that I think @Volhout just plucked from the web and it doesn't seem to contain proper text descriptions for the instruments and samples (do these always have a 1:1 relationship?) and also seems to contain more "songs" than the PicoMite can play. With what little knowledge I have, I'm guessing the PicoMite always plays the first pattern/song and has no way to reach subsequent songs ? The reason I'm poking is that I was hoping there might be some reusable samples / sound fx which I could add to the game (currently only has a single music track, the existence of the other songs in the file was a surprise) but whilst I can play some of the individual samples they are just drowned out by the music. Any advice as to where I can go from here ? Best wishes, Tom Edited 2023-11-27 03:17 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1113 |
With PLAY MODFILE the Pico play the all File. A MOD usually only contains one song. It contains a playlist that is played, this playlist contains the order in which the patterns are played . The pattern contains 64 positions that indicate when which sample is played and at which pitch. so the Playlist can look like this: 00,01,02,03,00,01,02,04, etc this calls to play the patterns by Number.. and a Pattern might look like this C-2 4 xxx |G-2 4 xxx|E-2 4 xxx|C-2 4 xxx | C-2 4 xxx |G-2 4 xxx|E-2 4 xxx|C-2 4 xxx | C-2 4 xxx |G-2 4 xxx|E-2 4 xxx|C-2 4 xxx | etc.. C-2 4 xxx is the Note, C at Octave 2 , Sample Number 4 the xxx holds controller messages for example how to play the sample or Mod related commands like a jump to start of another pattern.. Better explained on wikipedia the Samplename in the Mod is just Text,which was used by many creators for greetings and other advertising Edited 2023-11-27 06:23 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1113 |
The reason some of the individual samples are drowned out by the music. This is probably due to the fact that there are only samples that belong to the music. So if a single sample plays for a short time, it gets lost in the music In order for this to stand out from the music, you should use samples that play correspondingly louder and should be Sounds, i.e. not a musical instrument Here you find som funny SFX Samples: royalty-free 8-bit sound effects If you want do have Music and SFX the same Time, the SFX must get a Part of the Music .MOD File. To start, you need samples for the SFX, 8 - 16khz Mono. You need your Music as a Mod File and you need a Tracker Program to add the SFX to the existing MOD file. I had done a little example here There can be 32 Samples in a MOD but only a few MOD files actually use all of the possible samples. That's why you can use the free "slots" to store the sfx samples there. The player for the MOD file does not call up these samples because they are not part of the music. This is where PLAY MODSAMPLE comes into the Game.. With this we get the MODPlayer routine to play the individual sample without interrupting the music. At the Start of the Game you call Play Modfile to start the Ingame Music For example, the SFX you need is in "Sampleslot" 16 Call PLAY MODSAMPLE 16,1 16 is the Number of the Sample, 1 is the Channel (there are 4 possibly channels you can use, so if you use the alternating channelnummbers 1-4, you are able to play up to 4 independent Sfx Samples at the same Time) BTW: The original MODPlayers only had 4 channels in total (Amiga hardware limitation) and you would use the SFX to overwrite one of these channels with your SFX or the SFX would stop playing when the next tone is called up by the music on this channel. However, with the player routine used in Picomite, these channels are independent of those on which the music is played. The problem I'm struggling with is that we only have a limited mod buffer and the entire mod with the effects has to fit in there. Edit... The Links to the Modplayer, used in MMBasic, Peter posted some weeks ago Mod Source Edited 2023-12-05 20:01 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 4040 |
Hi Martin, I had a bit more of a play with Milky Tracker and am generally getting the idea, though I doubt I will ever be creating a .MOD from whole-cloth and am still unsure of the distinction between sample and instrument. Can multiple instruments use the same sample without multiple copies of the sample being present ? Presumably its the samples that largely govern the size of the .MOD file ? Regarding the PETSCII Robots problem, I guess we could agree to increase the "standard" MODBUFF size on Game*Mite (and PicoGAME VGA) but where do we stop ? Presumably the issue with the troublesome track is that one of the instruments is using a particularly large sample ? If so could you change that instrument to use (part of?) one of the other samples, even part of a sound effect ? The result wouldn't be exactly the same as the other platforms but perhaps it would be good enough ? Best wishes, Tom Edited 2023-12-05 21:39 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1113 |
hmm multible sounds in one Sample ... could be done by using the 9XX Sample offset command, but why ? that saves just "slots", the length of the sounds are the same, just all in one Slot.. Ignore the fakt that Milky tracker can store several Samples in one Slot.. This is not part of a MOD File, maybe xm. Here I made just for Fun a MOD where every Wavform is 36 BYTES long. 16khz Samplefrequence / 440HZ(~Note A) =36.36... so I used one full Periode and set the Looppoint from start to finnish. Noise for "Drums" are 128BYTE. Now that's very extreme and doesn't sound special either. It's just to show with how little you can generate chiptune. Look at the Filesize. If we work that way (kind of) we have plenty of room for SFX Without having to worry about buffer size Gigi.zip Edited 2023-12-05 22:57 by Martin H. 'no comment |
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javavi Senior Member  Joined: 01/10/2023 Location: UkrainePosts: 216 |
A simple MOD file player for PicoMite/VGA PMMP - PicoMite Music Player  PMMP.zip |
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